Health Promotion Model

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After many years of the dominance of individual based models that centered on intrapersonal determinants on the field of health promotion , these models has been challenged for its limited value for the understanding of persons’ health (1-4). The primary drive of these critiques was that the individual based approach focused on the intrapersonal behavior changing while neglecting the social, economic and political context, within which individual health behaviors are both formed and occurred, resulting in victim blaming (3, 5, 6). Moreover, these models have been criticized for their limitation in decreasing the health inequality within population (7, 8). Previous data show that it is mainly the middle and upper classes that have benefited…show more content…
Any expectation that programs with moderate and temporary effects that reach small numbers of people will create population-wide health promotion is unreasonable. All of these reasons justified health promotion field movement to a population- wide approach such as socio- ecological model. Another important enforcement for the adaptation of multi- level model in the health promotion field is the ‘The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion’ Achieving Health for All (10). This document, explicitly recognized that health outcomes are affected by factors outside of the health care sector, emphasizes the social determinants of health, such as poverty, unemployment, poor housing and other social and economic inequities. It called for shifting the attention from modifying the individual risk factors to address the social, environmental, and political context…show more content…
Where some of these factors cannot be modified such as the age and sex, some like knowledge, skills, and attitudes can be adjusted. Strategies aim to address the individual level of physical activity should focuses on providing children with knowledge and skills. Knowledge and skills includes information about physical activity and the fundamental motor skills as well as sports specific skills. Hence it is important to provide physical education curriculum in schools as well as some sport- specific programs in community such as swimming and horse riding programs. Also, it is important to teach children about the concept of physical activity in their school curriculums. For instance, a lesson in since can illustrate the effect of physical activity on the cardiovascular health. Moreover, considering improving children personal skills to increase self-efficacy and decrease perceived barriers can be significant. Targeting the interpersonal level of physical activity include modifying social environment, culture and society with whom the child interacts. Addressing culture and society need a shared work of many sectors such as public health agencies, governmental and private workplaces, and media. These sectors together can provide parents, teachers and others with news, ads, tips and ideas to make them physically active with children. Parent’s

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